COVID taught humanity a lesson...

...or so they say.

Source: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images.

For one of my first freelance writing gigs, I wrote this cute little piece on the lesson COVID taught humanity (according to a Pew poll). “A large majority of U.S. adults (86%) say there is some kind of lesson or set of lessons for humankind to learn from the pandemic,” so says the study – that we lost religion, that we lost inner peace, that we lost our way. Some say we shouldn’t have “shut down the economy,” some say that COVID was reminiscent of the rapture, and many add that the political divide became more dichotomous than ever. They trust the government less than ever, believe science wasn’t prioritized over personal preference, and claim we need to be grateful for the lives we lead.

Has anything changed in those two long years since the poll was taken? Yeah – my opinion.

Back when I wrote the article, my conclusion was this:

Regardless of the nature of the lessons, it’s clear that Americans are tired of divisiveness, anger, and vulnerability. Many seem to feel they live in a world they can’t control, and despite their wish for a more united and compassionate America, we are subject to a power greater than ourselves (religious or otherwise) that regulates the arc of our lives.

Whether they believe the result of the pandemic is a rapture, an economic collapse, a broken political system, or the death of considerateness, the sense of despair in these responses is clear. Hopefully, these lessons that seem harsh and heartbreaking at the moment can lead to substantial long-term change and a brighter future.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Past Sara was on the right track thinking about how Americans are in an acute sense of despair and that many of us feel we have little control over things that fundamentally influence our existences. But when it comes to divisiveness, anger, and vulnerability, I get the feeling that those feelings are our bread and butter. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s always going to be there, and we’ll always get secondary gains from it.

From the paranoid/schizoid position of Melanie Klein to Fairbairn and splitting, humans inherently have feelings of anxiety, rage, and hate that come as a package deal with love and tenderness. However, things are a little different than they were in Klein’s time; further studies show that Americans are angrier than past generations. Why? Is the outright display of our id-driven anger the true lesson we learned from COVID?